They brought with them their talents for flavouring with spices and their techniques of roasting and
marinating, blending them with local African cuisine and ingredients to produce spicy dishes.

From their Asian colonies they brought the orange, lemon and lime. and from Brazil, their colony in South
America, they brought chillies, peppers, corn, tomato, pineapples, banana and the domesticated pig.

But the Portuguese really made their mark with the introduction of the hot chilli pepper which originated
in South America. Today it’s also known in Southern Africa as "African birds eye", or "African red devil".

It is a cultivar of the chilli pepper, that grows both wild and domesticated. It is a highly popular
ingredient in Portuguese South African cooking, especially in the form of "peri-peri" (also known as
piri-piri).

"Peri-Peri" is used in preparing sauces and marinades for roast and grilled dishes, especially chicken and
various fish. It is made by warming sieved lemon juice, adding the freshly picked and tremendously hot
African birds eye peppers and letting it simmer for exactly 5 minutes.

Thereafter it is salted and pounded to a paste. This paste is heated up again with more lemon juice. The
end result is a basic Peri Peri or Piri Piri sauce
that can be used over meats, fish, shellfish etc.

Including the more traditional Portuguese ingredients such as olive oil, lemon juice and garlic, the
fearlessly fiery Portuguese food cuisine has become highly popular in South Africa.

Dishes such as peri-peri chicken, peri peri chicken livers and peri peri prawns have become national
symbols. Portuguese-South Africans are particularly gifted when it comes to preparing seafood, baking
delicious bread and preparing memorable meat dishes.

Peri-Peri prawns, next to peri-peri chicken livers and peri-peri chicken, are one of the Big 3 of the
Portuguese-South African kitchen. You have not lived so to speak until you have devoured a plate of
delicious garlicky Portuguese peri-peri prawns and washed them down with cold beer or chilled white wine.

Peri-Peri chicken has almost become an institution in South Africa. After marinating the chicken in either
a mild, medium or hot peri-peri sauce with garlic, lemon juice and herbs, it’s flame grilled to tender
and succulent perfection, a unique flaming taste experience.

A steak meal with a difference. It consists of cubes of perfectly aged rump steak threaded onto trimmed bay
leaf skewers. The cubes are then dipped into rock salt before putting them on the barbecue fire. Slightly
charred on the outside and succulent on the inside, it tastes magnificent.